HUNGARY: Hungary's Blue Dyeing Museum presents the history of jeans in the former Communist country.

A new blue jeans exhibition is on display in the somewhat unlikely location of a folk museum of blue dyeing in the small town of Papa in western Hungary. The exhibit, entitled 'Jeans Forever', details the various production methods of jean-making but focuses mainly on the unusual history of jeans in Hungary. The museum collected special items from collectors and jeans companies across Hungary and plan to lay the foundations of the country's first jeans collection from this exhibit. Blue jeans were invented by Levi Strauss in the 19th century but denim, the basic jeans material, dates back to the 16th century. The Levi Strauss jeans appeared on the world stage from the 1930s with the era of western films. They became widely popular from 1960s in western Europe but in communist bloc countries jeans were originally regarded as a capitalist vice. During the communist era people across Central Europe acquired their jeans via Yugoslavia where western products were widely available. Jeans were often smuggled into Hungary and sold at flea markets for high prices. When the communist authorities realised they could not stop the jeans mania they decided to come up with a communist version. In 1977 the BudaFlax textile factory produced the Trapper jeans, Hungary's answer to blue jeans. The first Trapper jeans, however, caused disappointment among the region's young because the indigo colour was weak and the quality of the material inferior to western brands. Within a few years Trapper's improved quality conquered not just Hungary but also some neighbouring countries, even though Western brands were becoming more easily available. Yet wearing jeans was about more than fashion. It was also a political statement, as Edina Meri, designer of the exhibition, explained. "Especially in the early era of the 1960s and 1970s the jeans also meant a silent resistance against the Kadar [Hungarian communist leader] regime," she said. "The blue jeans in general, in the US too, carried an extra meaning symbolising a kind of national resistance and peace movement." One of the Papa Museum's buildings is located in the only surviving blue dyeing factory of Central Europe. The workshop once belonged to the Kluge family who migrated to Hungary in the 19th century from Sorau, Saxony, today part of Poland. Zsolt Gerencser, a blue dye artist, runs a blue dyeing workshop with his wife in the nearby town of Gyor and regularly holds demonstrations of the ancient blue dyeing technique to visitors of the museum. The museum hopes their exhibition will lure the younger generation into the museum to learn about the connection between blue dyeing and the jeans they wear.

ITN Source | December 28, 2006

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